A Lot to Leviticus!

“For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Lev. 11:45

Reading Through the Bible in 2010 Lev. 10-13

Where were you when you learned about the blood?

There are events in life that shape us – things that happen and we are changed - never to go back to life as we lived it before. Usually they surprise us, we don’t have a clue that they are about to happen.

I remember the first time that I met Charlie. It was the summer after eighth grade and two guys and two girls met at the park to play tennis. One of the guys was Charlie and one of the girls was me. As I returned a ball that the young man in the red plaid bermuda shorts slammed at me, I never dreamed that he would become the love of my life. Years passed. We started “going out” as juniors in high school. We married after I finished nursing. Things had changed forever because of a tennis match.

My life had turned a corner. Charlie had entered. We've been married for forty-five years. But when I first met him, I had no idea how much influence his interests, family, friends, ideas, and values would have on me in the years to come…. all because my friend and I decided to go play tennis.

When our first child was born, we brought little Ethan home in a blue receiving blanket. We laid our angelically sleeping baby down on the bed. Charlie and I and my mom all stood over him gazing down adoringly. Charlie broke the beatific silence,

“I wonder what we do with him for the next eighteen years?” he questioned.

My mother looked at him, as incredulous as most mother in laws are at young son-in-laws, and said, “Oh, you’ll learn. Children can take up a lot of time.”

We did learn. His life, and the lives of the three children that followed, have indeed “taken up a lot of our time.” They have filled our thoughts and consumed our days and brought us measures of joy that we never could have dreamed about before we set that little baby on the bed.

Events happen and they change our lives. Can’t we all picture exactly where we were when we watched the images of 9 – 11? Charlie and I were living at the farm in Fall Creek when my brother called. He said, “Turn on your TV right now!” The images of the planes, the fire, the ash, the people jumping to the ground, the firemen running in…, we had no concept of the impact these images would have on our lives. As we watched the collapse of the Twin Towers, we didn't know that this would affect America forever.

Where were you when you first heard about the blood?

I was at a Christian Women’s Club luncheon in Augusta, Georgia. I was thirty- one years old and I thought I was a Christian. After all, I believed in God!

We ate our lunch and afterwards an “inspirational speaker” spoke to us. She said, “If you were the only person in the world, Jesus Christ would have come. The sinless spotless Son of God, the Creator of the universe, would have bled and died on that cross just for you and your sins.”

“Huh”? I thought. “Just for me?”

As I listened to her speak, conviction rolled over me like the waves of the sea. I suddenly knew that I was a sinner and that I needed my sins to be forgiven.

The speaker continued: "Only the blood of Jesus can wash away our sins and make us holy. There is nothing that we can do about our sin by trying to be good. Sin will never disappear through our own human efforts."

I didn't see it coming, but all of a sudden, I had run smack dab into the blood of Jesus - at a luncheon!

As she spoke, I knew that I had never personally asked Jesus to come into my life and take away my sins. I had never spoken one word to Him about my sins! God revealed so much to me as I listened to that speaker - all of a sudden, there it was – confronted by the blood!

Where were you when you heard about the blood of Jesus Christ?

When I got home, it was very quiet. I sat down at my desk and asked Jesus to come into my heart. I asked Him to cleanse me with the blood that He had shed for my sins. I asked Him to be my Lord forever.

Will I ever forget that precious day? Never! I can remember the light coming in the window and the blue flowered curtains that suddenly had a brighter hue. I felt the sin of thirty years slide off of my back – “as far as the east is from the west,” the Bible says. I stood up, amazed, and said, "The blood of Jesus – it has made me clean. I'm free!”

I knew that so positively that I even wrote a poem about being free. Granted, it was a short poem because it came to an abrupt end when my friend, Sally, returned with my four young children. Each one needed something from “Mom.” After a few minutes, I thought, “Did this really happen?” My life had quickly returned to pouring juice, finding shoes, changing diapers, and answering questions.

But it had happened. I had been forever impacted by a luncheon that I had approached with absolutely no clue. The blood of Jesus had freed and changed me like no other event in my life.

Did I have any idea of how my journey with Him would look? I didn’t even think about it as I talked to my friend and tended my children’s needs. But that day I had started on a joy filled journey with the King of the universe. It still gives me goose bumps to write about it.

The book of Leviticus gives the people of Israel intricate instructions about living in the presence of a holy God. All the sacrifices of all the animals that we’ve been reading about pointed to the sinless Jesus – the true lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world. When the Israelites put their hands on the animal that was being killed for their sins, they felt its life being sapped for them. As they watched its innocent blood being sprinkled on the altar, it was a graphic picture of the atoning blood that needed to be shed for the forgiveness of their sins. All the sacrifices, the Altar, and the Officiating Priest illustrated the Sinless Savior, Jesus Christ, who would die for their sins. The bloody sacrifices carried out by Aaron and his sons were a picture of how Jesus Christ was both the Lamb of God, Who takes away our sins and our High Priest. Whew! There’s a lot to Levitcus.

“But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation.

Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh,

How much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Heb. 9:11-14

I was in Augusta, Georgia – a long way from Wisconsin. That's where I learned about the blood. That’s where my joyful journey with Jesus truly began?

Where were you when you learned about the blood?